Hey guys, I am having some serious issues with OS X in general when it comes to playing back audio. I have always been a Windows guy, but bought a Macbook Air in late 2014 to see what I thought of OS X these days. Mostly I really like it, except when it comes to playing music. I haven't got a single program to function correctly with my gear apart from Spotify, which is hardly ideal.

My set-up is as follows:
2014 Air running current version of OS X.
Decibel (or any other audio program really) set to hog mode with preload into RAM.
FLAC and MP3 of various quality.
Focusrite 18i20
Yamaha HS8's

I actually did manage to get one file to play one time, but it never happened again. Usually I just get a message saying "exclusive access required for.." down the bottom, though exclusive access is enabled. After that it might play a second of the track through the laptops internal speakers and then cut out. My speakers will also do a little bit of popping in this time, like the Focusrite is being turned on and off again or maybe the driver is dropping in and out. I have about 45 hours left on my trial, so would love to get this solved in this time, as I'm not paying fifty bucks (Australia) for something that I can maybe fix. It's all very frustrating when it works perfectly on my Windows machine (MusicBee through WASAPI).